With the development and popularity of multimedia communications, there are increasing requirements for Internet contents and applications. A content or media distribution network (CDN or MDN) technology emerges to overcome the problem of low Internet connection speed on original networks.
The CDN is a network architecture and integrated system based on the content distribution technology. The content distribution technology is a distribution cache technology based on traffic management, load balancing and distributed technologies. It places a cache server at an edge node of the Internet, and distributes file contents from a source node to the network edge that is closest to a user through load balancing, thus allocating and accessing proximate resources and responding to multimedia information faster.
FIG. 1 shows a structure of a CDN or MDN in the prior art. The CDN or MDN structure includes:
an end user portal (EU-Portal), adapted to enable a user to access contents or media, including content or media presentation and user login authentication, where the user can add, delete, query or modify personal attributes by logging in to the portal;
a request routing system (RRS), working as the portal for the user request and the scheduling center in the media distribution network, and adapted to balance the load distribution at each content cache site, select a best access site according to the user request, and improve the availability of a site. A content route is set according to the network topology, network delay, and server load and rule; a best site is specified to provide services according to a specific content request. A content routing system is adapted to set the route according to multiple factors, including proximity between the site and the user, content availability, network load, and device condition; and
an edge server (ES), adapted to provide streaming services for the user, act as the streaming proxy, monitor the user login/logout, and provide a usage mediator (UM) with a real consumption record of the user.
As shown in the network structure in FIG. 1, after obtaining a content or media request of the user, the RRS determines at least one proper ES according to a series of policies; the user originates the content or media request to the determined ES; if the requested content exists in the ES, the ES returns the content to the user; otherwise, the content cache of the ES pulls the requested content from the original server to a local position, and then returns the requested content to the user.
During the implementation of the prior art, the inventor discovers that the bandwidth of the ES through which the file data is provided to the user is fixed, so only limited number of users can be supported at the same time. To meet the requirements of users, the capability of the edge node needs to be increased linearly with the increase of users. This requires huge investments in the edge node.